I have been writing about technology, people and companies for more than 25 years. I've written for most of the major industry publications, including PC World, Infoworld, Computerworld, eWEEK, and others. Send comments, questions, ideas for columns, etc. to me at david (at) coursey.com. Circle me on Google+

Happy Birthday, Bill Gates! You Made Steve Jobs Possible

Happy birthday to future Nobel Peace Prize winner Bill Gates, who turned 56 on Friday. Among his many achievements is having made the Steve Jobs we remember possible.

For without Bill, Steve would have watched Apple implode after his 1996 return from exile. No iPod, no iTunes, no iPhone, no iPad. Probably no Macintosh

More on that in a moment.

After Steve’s death, friends of mine used the occasion to compare Jobs to Gates, generally giving Steve benefit of every doubt and piling on Bill.

That just isn’t right.

Not to take anything away from Steve, but who would you rather have as a next-door neighbor? The guy best known for his reality distortion field and nasty disposition or the guy who is spending his billions wiping out polio and malaria?

Would you prefer the guy who denied paternity of his first child — while mom collected welfare — or the guy who made himself an expert on tropical diseases so he could help save Africa’s children from them?

Would you rather sit down with the guy who convinced Warren Buffet to likewise give away his fortune, or the guy not known for having given away any of his own?

Bill Gates has been unjustly vilified many times over the years, but time has been good to him. Our grandchildren will remember Gates not for Microsoft but for curing diseases, helping the poor and improving education. That’s why I think he and his wife, Melinda, will win a Nobel.

Most of the anti-competitive practices Gates was accused of, Apple actually carried out. At some point, Apple may face an anti-trust reckoning for its control of an entire ecosystem of entertainment and information.

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The point was that when Steve returned Apple was 90 days from bankrupt and bringing Steve back was a desperation play. Had Microsoft or somebody not stepped in, Steve and Apple would not have been around to ignite the revolution that followed. Microsoft could have left Apple to die and chose not to. Pretty simple. The post deals only with the time after Steve returned, not before he left.

“The post deals only with the time after Steve returned, not before he left.”

Except for the comment you made about Jobs improving on what Bill and Microsoft started. That certainly implies that Gates and Microsoft put down the groundwork for Apple product development, which simply isn’t true. Even Microsoft supporters admit that Windows wasn’t close to being as good as the Mac OS until 1995.

Gates certainly has made many great contributions to computing. You could argue that there wouldn’t be an independent software industry without him. The Apple/Microsoft deal however; was a win-win, so you should stop making it sound like Gates did it out of the kindness of his heart. As you mentioned, Apple got cash and a commitment from Microsoft to keep making MS Office. Microsoft got some much needed positive PR (they were under a lot of scrutiny from the Justice Department; which, by the way, provided another incentive to keep making Office on the Mac) and the ability to point to Apple and say “see, there’s a competitor”. Gates didn’t see Apple as a potential threat in any scenario, which is why he made the deal.

I’ve read your comments for years both when I was a Mac developer and aficionado and later when I broke free of the cult and became a Windows developer (although the Apple world is still trying daily to drag me back…)

I just want to say THANK YOU for pointing out the things that Jobs did that can only be described as henious that now most people are happy to sweep under ther rug simply because this P. T. Barnum reincarnate made shiny toys.

I jumped from the Apple ship when Jobs came back because I feared it would end up a nasty vindictive company and indeed, that is exactly what it became. Jobs was the man who defined the Mac (after creating a $10,000 personal computer – which cost about the same as TWO CARS in 1983) as the computer for the ‘rest’ of us… which is true if you consider the upper 5% to be ‘the rest of us’.. See, I thought that meant – you know – regular people whose average income is around $40K or less for a family of five.

When I hear rubbish like how ‘Apple brought computing to the general public’ I want to punch a fist through a wall. Microsoft, for all its flaws and foibles, is the company that brought these things to the general public. For all the rubbish about the “Windows Tax” – the fact remains, Windows runs on computers as cheap as $200.

It may not be in Apple’s (read Jobs) DNA to make a ‘good’ computer under $500 (which should say something about the iPad), but fortunately that IS in Microsoft’s DNA… which is why over one BILLION computers are running Windows and 68 million run MacOS.

I’ve never been a fan of Bill Gates – I argue he personally destroyed the camarderie of the original computing community – but as you note in another article – he’s redeemed himself.

Jobs, on the other hand, left the world as nasty as he was while he was in it.

Please explain how Microsoft brought computing to the general public, or did anything that Digital Research couldn’t (and wouldn’t) have done with DR DOS or IBM couldn’t have done with OS/2. That is sort of like saying Google brought smartphone usage to the masses because they have a higher market share in the mobile OS market. I’d also like to hear your opinion on whether Microsoft was inspired by the Mac when the company created Windows

First, both the graphical user interface and mouse came from XEROX PARC. Whether Steve or Bill got there first is a moot question. Do I think the Mac influenced subsequent versions of Windows, of course it did. Do I think having Microsoft Office available on the Mac kept Mac alive, that is likewise true. Apple and Microsoft both competed and grew off one another in the PC/laptop space.

OS/2 was a failure and even IBM couldn’t have made it a success. If the DR folks (his wife?) hadn’t sent the IBM folks packing when they showed up, we might be using DR-DOS, which was a fine OS. I used it. The challenge is that customers like and benefit from standardization. That is why Windows and Microsoft apps have been so successful — companies and individuals made them a standard. Some of the competitors — like WordPerfect and Lotus — also messed up, giving Microsoft the ability to grab customers.

I do appreciate your replies, but I am frustrated by how you avoid basic questions. You said Steve built on what Bill and Microsoft STARTED (emphasis mine). How is that true in any interpretation of history? I am not arguing the point that Gates made important contributions to computing, as that is undeniable.

OS/2 was a failure because Microsoft abandoned it to to pursue the development of Windows (do you remember that Microsoft did the original development of OS/2?) and did a better job of licensing Windows to PC clones. I agree that WordPerfect and Lotus didn’t embrace the GUI fast enough and that is why they failed.

Microsoft Windows was successful because of price, timing, clever licensing, and (most important) developer support. Those are the reasons I admire Gates as a capitalist and CEO. He is not an innovator and that’s OK.

The IBM PC and Lotus 1-2-3 are really the starting point for wide adoption of personal computing in business and the industry grew from there. The early Apples we ultimately failures (but great for their time) and the early Macs were islands — nice ones, but still islands. Also, Apple’s approach of selling only high-dollar machines allowed Microsoft to be the engine driving a PC on every desktop.

Microsoft has done a lot of innovating under the covers and inside their applications and in things that developers and enterprises see that are very important and keep Microsoft an important company. Both Apple and Microsoft have been significantly built upon other people’s ideas. But so are most businesses.

Microsoft is the sole reason for every home having a computer now. Just imagine having to use the non-user-friendly programs that other companies used to do, like Lotus, DR, IBM, WordPerfect, etc. No wonder these programs are not around anymore, they used to make our lives miserable! Currently Adobe products are very heavy and badly programmed, can’t wait to see MS equivalents for them.

OS/2 was a great concept, but died gracefully, because even the big Giant couldn’t do what Microsoft had done – user-friendly interface!

I believe that Bill was “at the right place at the right time”, when he offered to provide a language for the IBM PC. I’ve heard that IBM was just about to scrap the PC product line because they didn’t believe in it and it didn’t conform to their corporate market. The rest is history…

Bill was simply a marketing genius and a great entrepreneur and CEO. Now he is about to become a humanitarian genius as well.

Happy Birthday Bill, every extra year for you is a benefit for humankind…specially the nerds ;) So wish you many many more years to come!

You can argue against some of the statements that David Coursey makes on this article, like that Microsoft saved Apple from bankruptcy. What you can’t do is argue that the few and less elegant attributes you might give Gates will matter a lot more to humanity many years from now, when our iDevices are long gone. When we fail to recognize accomplishments that really matter, helping the poor, healing the sick. We need to see outside our reality distortion field.

i guess my point is an article that celebrates Gates’s accomplishments needn’t contain criticisms of Jobs. Those attacks and misstatements display at best a lack of objectivity and at worst a desire to generate web traffic. I mean how obnoxious is the title “Happy Birthday Bill Gates! You made Steve Jobs Possible”? Pure click-bait…